Small powered vehicles are known for grooming sand surfaces such as those found in the sand traps or bunkers of golf courses. These vehicles typically have three ground engaging wheels arranged in a tricycle configuration comprising a steerable front wheel and two rear drive wheels. An operator sits on a seat on the vehicle and drives and steers the vehicle using a steering wheel adjacent the seat. The SAND PRO® brand of bunker rakes manufactured and sold by The Toro Company, the assignee of this invention, is a well-known line of sand grooming vehicles of this type.
A trailing rake is towed behind sand grooming vehicles of this type to engage and smooth the sand. Traditionally, such rakes include a plurality of independently movable rake sections that dress or smooth the sand in a final finishing operation. Each such smoothing rake section typically comprises a substantially rigid plate having a plurality of V-shaped teeth disposed along a lower rear edge thereof. These rigid plates are normally angled rearwardly and downwardly relative to the forward direction of motion of the vehicle. Sometimes, the angle of inclination of the plates is so great that the plates are almost completely horizontal to lie atop the sand like a mat. As the vehicle is driven forwardly, the rigid plates and the rake teeth formed at the lower or rear edges thereof engage and groom the sand to provide a smooth and finished looking surface to the sand as the smoothing rake sections are towed over the sand by the vehicle. U.S. Pat. No. 3,823,781 shows a sand grooming vehicle with a trailing rake of this type.
The types of sand grooming vehicles and rakes known in the art are not free of problems when one attempts to use them in the bunkers of modern golf courses. Over the years, golf course bunkers have generally become smaller, are often more contoured in the sense of having steeply angled sides along their periphery, and are used in greater numbers on a golf course than their older counterparts. The rigid plates and rake teeth often found in the traditional smoothing rake sections of known grooming rakes are prone to catching on, ripping and thus damaging either the lip of the bunker or an underlying artificial liner material that is sometimes used beneath the sand of the bunker for various purposes. Such damage can be time consuming and expensive to repair or is, at the very least, unsightly if left unrepaired.
Moreover, the Applicants have also discovered that the configuration of the plates and rake teeth do not always adequately reach and contact the sand. This occurs particularly along the periphery of the bunker where the steeply curved or angled sides of the bunker transition to a flatter bottom portion of the bunker. In such a situation, the Applicants have found that a middle portion of the traditional grooming rake section will be spaced up above and thus out of engagement with the sand when the rake section tilts upwardly about its inner end to attempt to follow the contours of the angled side of the bunker. An ungroomed strip of sand will result wherever this happens, thus detracting from the uniform appearance that is the desired end result when grooming a golf course bunker. Accordingly, it would be an advance in the art to provide a vehicle propelled sand grooming rake that would address the above-noted problems.
Sand is not the only granular surface that is groomed by vehicles that tow grooming rakes. Another such granular surface comprises the type of dirt used on the dirt surfaces of a baseball field, e.g. in the infield and base paths, around the dugouts, or in the outfield warning track. The grooming rakes used on such dirt surfaces are similar to but are generally configured somewhat differently than those used on sand surfaces. For example, grooming rakes used on a baseball field sometimes often comprise laterally extending rows of rigid teeth that scarify the dirt surface to loosen and break up the surface prior to a subsequently conducted finishing operation. Such grooming rakes are often called nail drags in the art.
One problem with prior art grooming rakes is that the nail drag implement is typically separate from the dirt finishing implement. This requires two separate operations; the first is to use the nail drag to loosen the dirt and the second is to use the finishing implement to smooth the dirt. In addition, it is not uncommon when maintaining dirt surfaces to need to push dirt from one place to another for various purposes, e.g. to level a high spot in the surface or to fill in a hole or low spot in the surface. However, in the art, this dirt pushing activity is done using a separate bulldozer type blade that is often mounted to the front of the vehicle. Thus, it would be a further advance in the art to have a grooming rake adapted for use with a granular surface comprising a dirt surface with the rake performing the scarifying and dirt smoothing operations in a single pass and with the rake also being able to function as a dirt pushing blade. Such an advance would be more productive in terms of labor costs and more cost effective in terms of purchase costs than the traditional multiple steps and multiple implements of the prior art.